Popular reviews

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  Review by Slig001 ★★★½

  Heroes Two begins with the burning of the Shaolin Temple and then follows on with a keenly focused story of two heroes - the black robed Hung Hsi-kuan and the white robed Fang Shih-yu, whose destinies entwine when the latter accidently helps the Qing Dynasty capture the former. As Chang Cheh directed Shaw Brothers martial arts films go, this one is pretty standard, but still works well thanks to its charismatic leads, fast pace and engaging story. Chen Kuan-Tai and Alexander Fu Sheng are great as the two heroes of the title and the film gives them plenty of opportunities to show off their martial arts skills in the numerous hard hitting fight scenes. The film plays out something like…

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  Review by threepenny ★★

  "What's that glow...looks like they're burning Shaolin Temple out there!" "Vern, get away from the window, I don't know why you're gawking, they burn that place down every other week. Any survivors this time?" "Can't really tell, Edna, but it looks like maybe Chen Kuan-Tai is getting away? And look! Here comes Alexander Fu Sheng, as the entirely fictional folk hero Fong Sai-Yuk! Probably a team-up." "Come back to bed, you know there's going to have to be like years of training before anything really happens. And besides, it's Fu Sheng, he'll probably be stupid and mistake the other guy for a bandit or something, end up helping the Manchus." "But I want to see! It looks like they're skipping…

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  Review by Gregor Kreyca ★★★

  A solid, slightly above average, Kung-Fu movie and one of the few Shaw Brothers movie I have ever seen on the big screen many years ago. I especially like the Spaghetti Western-like main theme on the soundtrack. Wonder which movie they “borrowed” that from. Other than that, there is not much to tell. Two charismatic and energetic young stars and plenty of good, even if not great and fairly bloodless, (for a Chang Cheh film) fights. Nothing in particular stands out here and Heroes Two is therefore not a must-watch in my book, but it should entertain fans of the genre and the studio.

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  Review by Dennis Vehlen ★★★½

  'Heroes Two' is a sort of mid tier Shaolin-themed Chang Cheh movie starring Alexander Fu Sheng that's still pretty good because it's so fast-paced and entertaining from start to finish that you hardly have time to notice the slight lack of story.
  The showdown has Lau Kar-Wing and Lee Hoi-Sang among others as Tibetan llamas and cuts to red a few times when it gets especially violent, which I always kinda love.

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  Review by Walter ★★★½

  Shaolin Temple shenanigans

  This is a decent Shaolin Temple cycle film from the team of Chang Cheh and fight instructors Tong Kai and Lau Kar-Leung. Less weapons work and more hand to hand.

  Chen Kuan-tai and Alexander Fu Sheng acquit themselves well but there's nothing about this movie that makes it stand out against the best of the Shaolin Temple movies that came out of the Shaw Brothers during the 1970's and 1980's.

  I liked it and do recommend it.

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  Review by Willow Maclay

  Really incredible editing down the stretch, which takes the typical gang fight mentality of a lot of Shaw Bros. movies and gives it a bit more heft by characterizing each fight as a two on one encounter. Cheh Chang never loses the plotting of the combat, and he also uses an application of a red filter when someone is killed so that the viewer can keep a mental tally of where things are and who is still alive. The fact that this is done with many pans and over 100 bodies participating in a dozen or so separate fights all at once is really astounding. Usually in movies of this type you can drift in and out of the finer…

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  Review by Scrambled Face ★★★½ 2

  Chang Cheh directed a ton of titles centering on the folk heroes of Shaolin Temple and their legacy. Having seen most of them now, I can confirm that it doesn't matter which order you watch them in, since they're not chronologal, each instead recounting a specific portion of the Shaolin legends. That said, this was the first of them, and not a bad place for a newcomer to start due to its relative simplicity. Alexander Fu Sheng stars as Fong Sai-Yuk, a young fan-carrying badass who, in a case of mistaken identity, sells out rebel hero Hung Si-Kwan (Chen Kuan-Tai) to the villainous Manchus who burned down Shaolin Temple. After that, every Ming loyalist in town, including his fellow Shaolin…

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  Review by BlakeTourville ★★★½

  Heroes Two feels a lot like a pseudo remake of a Chang Cheh film I watched last night, The Wandering Swordsman, with two heroes instead of one. Alexander Fu Sheng plays a Ming loyalist hero, who is tricked by the Manchus into capturing one of the strongest Ming loyalist supporters, and Shaolin hero, Chen Kuan-Tai. To make up for this heinous mistake he first tries to free Kuan-Tai by force, and almost dies, leading to a really unique second rescue attempt that I loved.

  I will say one of my least favorite things in Chang Cheh's, and really Shaw Brothers style kung-fu movies in general, is how dumb the main characters are. I do think it's for the purpose of…

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  Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★½

  One of Chang Cheh's films about the aftermath of the fall of the Shaolin Temple. One of the main characters is Fong Sai-yuk, but Cheh's isn't interested in mythmaking as much as in historical trauma and male bonding and how violence and athletic feats connect both.

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  Review by AThousandSons ★★★

  The Qing burn down Shaolin temple and commence hunting any survivors. Hung Hsi-kuan escapes, but is captured by former Shaolin member Fang Shih Yu when the latter is tricked into capturing Hung. Fang then swears to free Hung and fight the Manchus.

  This one has a pretty simple story to follow. There's not much to distract and while Tang Chia and Lau Kar-leung provide the fights, there's not much to separate it from others. The exception being the film turning red when killing blows happen in the final fight scene. At least the opening credits weren't replaced by updated titles (presumably as part of Celestial Pictures' remasters in the mid-to-late aughts).

  Shaolin Temple collection

  * Heroes Two
  * Men from the Monastery
  * The Shaolin Avengers
  * Shaolin Temple

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  Review by Sean Gilman ★★★★

  Chang Cheh's take on the Fong Sai-yuk character has Alexander Fu Sheng playing him as a good-hearted but dim-witted boob who is quite easily gulled into capturing one of the few survivors of the destruction of the Shaolin Temple, Chen Kuan-tai's Hung Si-kuan and handing him over to the actual, villainous perpetrators (Manchu troops, naturally) of said destruction. They constitute the two heroes of the title (it's not a sequel to a movie called Heroes, but an enumeration of protagonists, like with Warriors Two or Brothers Five) as Fong eventually realizes his mistake and undertakes a daring rescue.

  More here.

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  Review by giant13 ★★★ 4

  The first in Cheuh’s “long” Shaolin Cycle (he made 8 films in a 2 year period centered around the Shaolin temple), HEROES TWO is notable because it’s Fu Sheng’s first starring role in a Chang Cheuh film. The movie is about the Shaolin Temple being burned down and the Manchus chasing down Hung Gar inventor Hung Xiguan and the rest of his surviving rebels. Then Fong Sai-yuk shows up. 

  Chinese history and folklore aside, the Lau Kar Leung choreography and interesting use of red camera filter during the end sequence will be the most memorable part of this film and of course Fu Sheng’s charisma. Is it obvious to anyone else how much Fu Sheng overshadows Chen Kuan-tai? 

  Whenever the second act drags in one of these 70s Shaw films, I can’t get into or praise it, so I’ll only recommend this to Cheuh completionists, Shaw Brothers devotees, or Alexander Fu Sheng fans. Better stuff out there.